Simply Devine
December 31, 2010Devine has remained an ever-present.
While Phil Devine may no longer be as hands-on as he once was when guiding the seniors to championship glory way back yonder, he is still very much part of the furniture and fixtures down Stradone-way.
Reflecting on the past year, he is predictably philosophical in his analysis of a year that was clearly disappointing and a let-down of sorts.
The club's position in division three of the ACFL was unaltered and the long odds offered by bookies on their IFC hopes were seen to be spot on.
"It wasn't the best of years but it wasn't the worst either," Phil declares. "We're talking about a very young team and I feel they're on the way up.
"This year's under 21 crop of players have a lot of potential and we'd be looking to them to take the seniors forward with a lot of drive and energy.
"I think what happened mostly with the seniors this year was that their inexperience was shown up and there were some crucial injuries too.
"We just haven't enough seasoned campaigners on the current senior team. The balance between youth and experience just isn't there right now."
Never one to look at the glass as being half-empty, Phil is wont to reflect on matters United with the short of upbeat viewpoint that is positively uplifting.
The one-time star player who went onto become a top team-manager, administrator and, more latterly, proficient umpire calls it as he sees it.
"Last January, if you had sat down and thought about it, you wouldn't have expected the lads to go on and win the intermediate championship this year.
"At the same time, I was hoping that they'd be good enough to get promotion in the league 'cause they had enough ability to do that.
"As things worked out, the team just wasn't consistent enough and the strength in depth wasn't there to make up for fellas missing at various times."
While the business of 'coming the poor mouth' would almost appear to be stitched in the DNA of most clubs, Phil's take on the numbers game doesn't ring of anything other than truthfulness and a genuine appraisal of the current state of play in Laragh.
He says that seldom, if ever, has he seen such low numbers available to the club at adult level. Piecing together a second team is a real strain.
"We've been scraping together a reserve team for the last few years 'cause the numbers have been so low.
"And when the numbers are low, the quality wouldn't be the greatest and competition for places on the teams isn't hectic either."
Phil is heartened by the volume of good underage players which are dotted across the various grades at the club right now.
He recalls how the halycon days of Laragh United were spawned by the emergence of a coterie of starlets in the mid-seventies onwards.
When the club emerged from the loins of Laragh and Stradone in November 1972, Phil was an experienced defender and a seasoned campaigner.
"The club's success in the early seventies was slow and it wasn't until a group of young players like Ray Cullivan, Donal Donohoe and Fionan McDonagh came along that things started to gel for us at senior level.
"Those fellas had proven themselves before that in coming up through the ranks from teams that had won county minor and county under 21 titles.
"Then in 1975, the club won the county under 21 and again the following year and reached another couple of finals soon after that.
"I think that our current under 16s and minors are showing a lot of potential but everyone in the club will have to be patient and give them a chance."
The club's success in winning a MFL Shield title this year plus a division three title at under 16 level was warmly welcomed by Phil.
However he still feels it will take time for those county medallists to underpin a concerted upturn in the fortunes of the club's senior team.
It will take time too to amass the necessary numbers to be able to put together a sustained challenge for honours at premier level, he moots.
Laragh's primary school market is confined to Clifferna National School and Laragh National School and the numbers of boys attending both these schools has paled in comparison to the number of girls there.
"Because of the low numbers of boys in the locality, the club obviously has to try and make sure that we maximise the potential of whatever boys are playing football at the national schools.
"There's a good team of coaches though working away with the underage players in Laragh and things are well organised and the structures are there at juvenile level.
"The Celtic Tiger didn't come our way in terms of increasing the population locally that much; most of the familes who have settled in Laragh from Dublin or elsewhere have grown up children.
"The parish of Laragh is big, geographically, but not in terms of the number of people living there. The club hasn't that big of a pick."
Referring once more to Laragh's 2010 squad of under 21 players, Phil says he is confident that they have what it takes to inspire a revival of the club's fortunes at senior level in the not too distant future.
He just hopes that those young standard bearers will be afforded the opportunity to live and work locally and not be forced to emigrate.
Not one ordinarily to put much weight on those who say that Dame Fortune can play a major role in a club's welfare, Phil does point out that Laragh were never far off the pace this year in either the league or the championship.
He suggests that Laragh's push for promotion from division three was killed on the back of a thousand cuts courtesy of a raft of narrow one/point defeats.
Laragh's intermediate championship campaign was, similarily, a tale of 'what might have been' but one coloured ultimately by a failure to achieve.
"We weren't good against Kill but we had our chances of beating Drumalee which makes you wonder when you see how they got on afterwards.
"We could have beaten Drumalee; it was probably our best display of the year but in tight games, experience counts and we just didn't have enough.
"The good thing about the championship from our point of view was that because of the situation with Ballinagh we were left in a three team group and even though we didn't do that well, we were able to hold onto our intermediate championship status."
Asked as to whether players these days have the same passion and enthusiasm for the club and the game as fellas from his playing days, Phil is typically up front and honest in his reply.
"If you're winning things, you'll have fellas who are hungry and enthusiastic and enjoying their football but if things aren't going well, it'll be a different story.
"On good teams, players will tend to put in a bigger effort 'cause they want to be part of that team and want to be among the medals."
He understands but is pained nonetheless the way the club's division three campaign limped along for most of the year.
So what if the man who managed the SFC-winning Laragh teams of 1982, '83 and '84, was back in the hot seat in 2011 what would his priority be for the seniors?
"I think the priority would have to be to get promotion in the league 'cause I think - and this isn't any disrespect to the other teams in the division - we need to get out of division three.
"Winning promotion next year would be a great boost to the club and to the morale and confidence of the players in particular.
"The current team can take heart from what Kingscourt achieved this year. I was impressed by them all year but you don't know how football championships or matches will turn out.
"I thought Munterconnacht would have won the junior championship so what do I know?"
Quite a bit as gaels in Laragh and much further afield would doubtless concur. Tweet
